The 10 Biggest Password Mistakes People Make

Ask computer techs what they make fun of the most after customers leave their shop and they'll say the questionably legal porn and nude selfies they found on your hard drive. But beyond the failed science experiment that is your body, they laugh the hardest at the ridiculously predictable passwords that are supposed to protect your system. Using any of the following terms is like locking your bank vault with masking tape and good intentions ...

#10. "Princess" and "Dragon"

I'm going to hit you with some information that may be shocking: Computer geeks tend to enjoy medieval fantasies. I urge you to take a few minutes to recover from that mind-bending revelation, because what I'm about to tell you next could explode the nipples right the hell off of your body.

DNF-Style/iStock/Getty ImagesLooks like you're about to switch to solids sooner than expected, little man.

Combined, about 4.8 million people use "princess" and "dragon" as passwords, which I'm assuming is more than the number of toddler pajamas those things are printed on. For comparison, that's the entire population of Alabama (which, incidentally, is the only known habitat of actual dragons).

#9. "Sex" (and Numerous Variations Thereof)

I understand that sometimes you're prompted to create a password and you just vomit out whatever happens to be on your mind at that second. And I get that sex is on most people's minds pretty much all the time. It's not like ALF or Wham! where you look back years later and drunkenly giggle, "Oh, man, remember sex? I wonder whatever happened to that?" Sex is everywhere, all the time.

Warner Bros. TelevisionAnd, thanks to Rule 34, ALF can be there, too.

The problem is that using a sexual term as a password puts you into a pretty large group. Just the first half-dozen variations alone are used by 3.2 million people. Think about it this way: If you stacked that many $1 bills on top of each other, you would have a stack of money $3.2 million high. If you have trouble picturing how big that is, ask an extremely rich stripper with a stacking fetish. She knows.

#8. "Baseball" and "Football"

So you're a sports fan? That's great! All those teams, players, and numbers are an inexhaustible well of material for a password. Seriously, pick your favorite team or player and one of their records, stats, jersey numbers, number of assault charges ... then mash that shit together like a little kid putting potato chips on his sandwich, and there you go. It's secure and easy for you to remember.

Or you could be like the 5.7 million uncreative bastards who just use the generic words "football" and "baseball." That's like loving ice cream and also choosing "ice cream" as your favorite flavor. And yes, there are really that many people who do it. Want to know how big 5.7 million is? If you traveled that far in miles, this is what the Earth and moon would look like:

#7. "LetMeIn"

Three million. That's how many people were too lazy to come up with something that couldn't be guessed by any 8-year-old on their first attempt. Even sticking a "please" on the end would make it at least somewhat hard, just from the act of adding more letters. But nope. "LetMeIn." It's one step up from telling your computer to go fuck itself. And once technology gains sentience, these people will be locked out of their accounts out of sheer spite.

#6. "Monkey"

"Monkey" is by far the most popular animal-related password, with 2.9 million people using it as the gateway guard to their mounds of monkeyless kitten pictures. Maybe it's because monkeys are inherently hilarious and people could use the laugh? It's kind of depressing when you think about it: some poor, desperate office drone for whom thinking of monkeys as often as he can is the only thing keeping him from a mortal escape through a dive-shattered window.

Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty ImagesMoments before he snapped and started flinging his poop at Doris from accounting.